Poll: Do you enjoy poetry?

[Esotera]

I'm quite partial to some Tennyson. I used to live in the same town as he did and it made so much more sense actually seeing what was inspiring him to write.

?Where, far from noise and smoke of town
I watch the twilight falling brown,
All round a careless-ordered garden,
Close to the ridge of a noble down.?

My favourite form is probably the short story though. It doesn't take too much time to read, but has an amazing amount of detail packed in out of necessity.

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

unlike other mediums its not exactly a "seller" which is interesting

I'm not into it but I am into lyrics (particually rap lyrics) that are well written

I had an English teacher in high school who was fond of arguing rap lyrics are the modern person's poetry and equally as deserving a place in English canon as any piece of classical poetry. It's an interesting standpoint to take, and I agree. I mean, sure there's a lot of rap that sounds banal, but that's easily the same as a ton of what are considered the "classics" of poetry and in return there's just as much rap that really do have incredible lyrics. Rap can be equally as beautiful as poetry, and it's far more likely to be what survives of us in a literary and poetic sense than the current wave of post-modern poetry.

OT: Yeah, I enjoy poetry. I wouldn't have taken English if I didn't. Obviously, I have my own personal poetry that I prefer to read - poetry from the First World War is especially profound and it has meant a lot more to me since doing the tour of the battlefields, memorials and mass graves a few years back. I'm fond of some of the metaphysicals like Donne; I've also always enjoyed the Romantics. Modern poetry tends to bore me though, but there are some interesting poets. Larkin is definitely my favourite of the modern age, although Cummings is up there as well thanks to his interesting idea on the layout of poems.

 

[Sanat]

Your options for the poll are very squiffy. You have one option for "absolutely love tremendously", and the other options are either indifference, dislike or randomness. Based on that, I choose not to vote as I like poetry a fair bit more than the next guy, but I don't deem it OMG AMAZING SELL MY ORGANS.

 

[Daveman]

I often write them in cards for special occasions/if I'm bored. I don't read it much though, apart from the odd Burns classic.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I'd have preferred it if the 'yes' poll option wasn't batshit retarded, but yeah, I like some poetry a lot. Hell, I can recite some Wilfred Owen from memory. He articulates the brutality of war so perfectly.


If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(The latin bit translates to 'it is sweet and fitting to die for your country'.)

 

[laggyteabag]

So in class last week we started studying Poetry, and I hate poetry, worst of all our teachers both said that most of us probably don't like poetry yet. yet. YET.

Nice way to shove the subject down our throats and to tell us what we like and don't like. GG.

As to why I don't like poetry, like detail, which is why I like books. A story that can be created in poetry can be created in a book and it will be infinitely better. That and poetry just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Dragoon]

i find poetry

often overly wanky

i do not like it

I seem to agree

Mostly it is pure bullshit

But at times it shines

 

[Farther than stars]

How can you be into a creative medium like gaming and not care for any of the others? That's like saying you're not into movies or not into music. I mean, sure, those people are out there, but simply aren't broadening their horizons enough. It's not like you have to love all the poetry out there, but dismissing an entire medium, man... you're missing some opportunities there.

 

[Mr F.]

I fucking love snow.

But I would never say as much on a poll which was written by someone who believes multiple punctuation shows greater enjoyment. Multiple punctuation is a sign of a diseased mind.

I used to write a lot, some of it got published in an anthology, some of it got into a book on understanding mental health issues. Good fun. My sister recently bought me a leather bound writing book to try and encourage me to get back into it. Strangely, thanks to my life developing actual issues, I no longer write. When I was a stupid fucking teenager who thought that a girl dumping me was the be all and end all of life I used to write on a daily basis. Now I cannot even remember the last time I put pen to paper and got the creative juices flowing.

I blame being a Uni student with all the free time of... I cannot find an apt metaphor. Something that has no free time.

 

[Mordekaien]

I used to write poetry in heaps back in my younger times, now I only dabble in those waters from time to time.
I like to read poetry that is not at all serious, even though I write otherwise.

 

[Gabanuka]

I'm a literature student, so I'll let you decide.
Hint: You kinda have to in order to not fail exams.

Not true. I like classical poetry and I had to do and exam on contemporary shit (not saying all contemporary poetry is shit but by God what we were doing was) Still passed the exam with great marks.

i find poetry

often overly wanky

i do not like it

You can love or hate
What matters is your respect
Do not generalise

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I don't appreciate it that much, to be honest, and I appreciate it less the more pretentious and less structured it is. Like the way I don't appreciate abstract art, except that I like art as a whole rather than being indifferent.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I'm a literature student, so I'll let you decide.
Hint: You kinda have to in order to not fail exams.

Not true. I like classical poetry and I had to do and exam on contemporary shit (not saying all contemporary poetry is shit but by God what we were doing was) Still passed the exam with great marks.

I suppose so, but liking what you're studying makes it a far less painful time.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I love poetry, I've written quite a bit of my own material which I'm proud of. I don't exactly read much official 'poetry' but I like to analyze the lyrics from songs I listen to, which are themselves a form of poetry. Its a shame that poetry is such an unpopular art form these days, some schools never study it and switch on the most popular radio stations and you will just hear "WE ARE NEVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER" repeated over and over again until you want to kill yourself.

 

[SinisterGehe]

I hate poetry that tries to be art, basically if the poetry doesn't know that it is poetry and attempts to be something more - then I hate it. But poems that know that they are just words.

When poet and poems that don't attempt to be something more than ideas, words, human culture. I like the material.



But yeah. In school the poetry classes and literature history, was just suffering. Because you cant take that shit seriously.


Let me read from my old exam paper that I found yesterday when shuffling trough my OLD stuff.

Here what we had to write 4 page essay from to pass the mandatory course:

" /////////////001{-blck-}////01010
..../Func.17////fls///
.......///ht///Lv......
.......-- ........ prnt///"

How can you get anything out of that? Of course I managed to write just plain bullshit to pass... With bad grade...

 

[Korenith]

I'm a literature student, so I'll let you decide.
Hint: You kinda have to in order to not fail exams.

Not true. I like classical poetry and I had to do and exam on contemporary shit (not saying all contemporary poetry is shit but by God what we were doing was) Still passed the exam with great marks.

I suppose so, but liking what you're studying makes it a far less painful time.

Personally I always found it was the stuff I either loved or hated that I wrote best about because I was passionate enough to justify my feelings. It was the poetry I was indifferent towards which I struggled to write well on.

OT: Depends on the poem. There are bits from almost all the eras and movements of poetry which I like but the majority doesn't do it for me so I don't tend to buy anthologies etc. because I enjoy such a small proportion of them.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I'm a literature student, so I'll let you decide.
Hint: You kinda have to in order to not fail exams.

Not true. I like classical poetry and I had to do and exam on contemporary shit (not saying all contemporary poetry is shit but by God what we were doing was) Still passed the exam with great marks.

I suppose so, but liking what you're studying makes it a far less painful time.

Personally I always found it was the stuff I either loved or hated that I wrote best about because I was passionate enough to justify my feelings. It was the poetry I was indifferent towards which I struggled to write well on.

OT: Depends on the poem. There are bits from almost all the eras and movements of poetry which I like but the majority doesn't do it for me so I don't tend to buy anthologies etc. because I enjoy such a small proportion of them.

Agreed, but having an opinion because you liked it makes writing essays on it easier, but when it comes to poetry you dislike, you have to hide your disdain and praise it regardless, something I kinda find hard to do.

 

[Coffeejack]

I enjoy crude poetry, or something that confounds expectations. See the assumption song by OneyNG for a good example.

A lovingly written romantic poem, as the precursor to a good, hard shag, is also much to be admir'd. Or so they say. I wouldn't know.

 

[Genocidicles]

I cannot stand it,

Except for Haiku I guess.

School ruined the rest.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

i find poetry

often overly wanky

i do not like it

I seem to agree

Mostly it is pure bullshit

But at times it shines

Haikus can be fun
But sometimes they don't makes sense
Refrigerator

I'm very ambivalent towards poetry. Older, more structured stuff (war poetry, Invictus as mentioned above, and stuff that generally isn't trying to be intellectual) is by and large pretty enjoyable, but free verse or free form or whatever the fuck they're called fill me with a burning hatred of written language.

This sort of thing, I enjoy: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175898